Big-State Primary Theory Fails First Big Test

Sen. Hillary Clinton is reportedly set to join president-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet as secretary of state. But earlier this year the two Democrats were rivals in the primaries, when Clinton suggested that Obama was unlikely to become president if he won the nomination because he couldn’t beat her in most of the biggest states.

In late March, Clinton said, “I don’t think anybody doubts that a Democrat has to have a number of the big states anchored in order to put together the electoral votes needed to win. There’s a generally accepted position that Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are the critical swing states for Democrats.” Later, after Clinton won in Pennsylvania, she said, “Why can’t he win a state like this one, if that’s the way it turns out … big states, states that Democrats have to win.”

Clinton’s argument came amid a heated primary season, and not all campaign talking points are meant to outlast the campaign. But it’s worth examining her argument, because presidential elections come around only once every four years. Theories about campaign math can develop from a minuscule sample of just one election, and take four years, or more, to overturn. And until they are overturned, the campaign press, eager for a fresh story, may parrot such theories, as some reporters did with the big-state theory even though it had holes before November. So let’s look at how the numbers turned out.

Among the nine states with the most electoral votes, Clinton beat Obama in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey. She also won uncontested primaries in Florida and Michigan and won the primary in Texas, though Obama won the state’s caucuses. Obama’s sole victory among these states in the primaries came in his home state of Illinois.

Yet in the general election, Obama won all of these states except Texas. That and Georgia were the only two states among the 15 top electoral-vote prizes that Obama failed to win — and he came much closer than did the Democratic candidates in 2004 and 2000. Obama won 269 electoral votes from these 15 states — enough to force an electoral tie even if he hadn’t won a single other state.

Of course, it’s possible that Clinton would have done as well, or better, if she had faced Sen. John McCain in the general election. In the exit poll, voters were asked who they would have voted for in a McCain-Clinton matchup. Clinton won that question by an 11-point margin, compared to Obama’s seven-point margin in the national popular vote.

Two caveats: (1) 5% said they would not have voted in that scenario, and four out of five of those hypothetical nonvoters voted for Obama; (2) as Obama supporter Nate Silver notes on his blog, that question was asked without the effects that a general-election campaign might have had on Clinton’s candidacy.

What’s certain is that hard-and-fast rules about electoral math are hard to come by even under normal circumstances. The closely contested Democratic primary race had no close antecedents, so any claims about the implications of primary votes in the general election were by necessity based largely on guesswork. And they weren’t borne out in the voting earlier this month.

About The Numbers

The Wall Street Journal examines numbers in the news, business and politics. Some numbers are flat-out wrong or biased, while others are valid and help us make informed decisions. We tell the stories behind the stats in occasional updates on this blog.